NSF awards $2.5 million to Purdue sustainability project
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given the Research Traineeship Award to a Purdue University-led program training students on producing sustainable food and electricity for populations through solar energy.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given the Research Traineeship Award to a Purdue University-led program training students on producing sustainable food and electricity for populations through solar energy. The NSF announced the $2.5 million award for Purdue and Rakesh Agrawal, the program’s principal investigator and Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering. Florida A&M University is partnering on the program.
The award for the collaborative Sustainable Food, Energy, and Water Systems project is one of six in the NSF’s research initiative on food, water, and energy systems. Agrawal said the interdisciplinary program aims to meet food, energy, and water management needs locally with local solar energy. Participants will study complex systems and then develop innovative solutions by combining basic scientific and technical principles from the diverse fields of agriculture, engineering, and science.
The five-year traineeship program will educate graduate students from an array of areas, including agronomy, agricultural and biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, chemistry, and agricultural economics. They will then create solutions to produce food and electricity in a local setting.